Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons by Fiona Deans Halloran published by University of North Carolina Press (2013) 380 pages Hardcover $29.95 Kindle $17.49.
Every student of the Civil War knows the drawings of Thomas Nast. His work for Harper’s Weekly made him one of the best-known illustrators of the war years. He depicted the tragic effects of the war on Northern families, the suffering of wounded veterans, and the war leadership of men like Lincoln and Grant. As he developed a strong editorial voice, he illustrated the moral necessity of emancipation, the immorality of a compromise with the Confederacy, and the urgency of placing the ballot in the hands of black men.
What you may not know is that Thomas Nast was only 20 years of age when the war began and that he had only been living in America for fourteen years at the time that Sumter was fired on.
Nast was a German immigrant whose family came to the United States when his father’s liberal views made the life of the refugee the only safe path for his family. In America, Nast left an English-only school, where he was humiliated, to study at two of New York City’s German schools. He took art lessons with German émigré painters. At fifteen he got his first job illustrating for Frank Leslie.
Living just a few blocks from the Five Points, he came to detest the Irish immigrants who were below him on the city’s shifting pyramid of hierarchy.
By 1863, Nast was one of the most in-demand artists of the war. Yet, he may have only been to the battle front a handful of times. Unlike artists like the English immigrant Alfred Waud, Nast did not take risks to see the fighting and record it for the folks back home. His battle scenes were, for the most part, drawn from his imagination after reading military reports. On a few occasions he was accused of stealing others drawings as his own.
In her biography of Thomas Nast, Fiona Halloran examines the rapid rise of the immigrant artist to national prominence and the use he made of his platform to promote an emancipationist agenda. For the modern readers, it may be hard to understand the impact Nast had on the politics of his day, but at the time, he was creating a new communications art form, the modern political cartoon, which was spread by the new illustrated weeklies. This was a transformative time for mass communications and for two decades Nast was on the cutting edge of that change. His work, published in some of the most popular journals of the time, were the memes of the 1860s.
For an audience emerging from illiteracy, Nast’s illustrated politics made it easy to identify the good guys and the bad. Nast’s Boss Tweed looked corrupt. Nast once drew Tweed’s head as a giant money bag. As long as Nast’s moral compass was pointed North, his readers had no need to fear. They could trust the funny, self-effacing chubby fellow. Nast’s readers could see from his cartoons that Southern white men (and Irish Northerners) were a violent source of danger to African Americans and American values.
Thomas Nast was made by the illustrated weekly, but he also made the Harper brothers very rich. It was not unusual for him to have four illustrations in a single issue of Harper’s Weekly. Fletcher Harper nurtured Nast and gave him the independence to express his opinion freely in his cartoons and pursue his passions. He had no passion stronger than his support for Ulysses Grant.
Halloran describes how Nast went from admirer of Grant the general into uncritical worshipper of Gran the national political leader. She describes his ceaseless elevation of Grant’s reputation, and his active and direct participation in Grant’s presidential campaign, even going so far as to supply art to the 1868 Republican Convention:
So when Grant’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate seemed certain, Nast went to work on a celebratory image. The result exemplified the mix of art and politics that characterized Nast’s work in the 1860s. On an enormous piece of fabric, Nast painted two pillars, each representing a presidential candidate. The Democratic pillar remained empty, since the Democrats would not meet until July. On the other pillar, Grant represented Republican hopes. Between them stood Columbia. Speaking for the nation, the party, and Nast, she points to Grant, challenging the Democrats: “Match Him!” When Nast hung the canvas on the convention stage, he carefully concealed it behind a curtain. When Grant officially won the nomination the curtain was dropped, revealing Columbia’s imperious demand. The delegates exploded with applause. Nast’s reputation as an asset to Republican presidential politics—built on his success with “Compromise with the South”—soared to new heights. “Match Him!” went on to become a campaign slogan, a song, and a poem.
When the Democrats nominated Seymour, Nast had a field day with the New York Democrat. Halloran writes:
In October, relying on readers’ recognition of the “Match Him!” campaign slogan, Nast produced a two-panel cartoon titled “Matched?” On the left, Grant stands elegantly in his Union uniform. At his feet lie captured emblems of victory: a flag, a sword, and guns of the Confederacy. Above Grant’s head is a quote from the general’s response to his nomination: “Let us have peace.”40 The phrase became Grant’s campaign slogan. On the right, Seymour, his hair drawn to look like horns, likewise surveys symbols of his record: rioting Irishmen, the burning Colored Orphan Asylum, and a lynched black man. At Seymour’s feet lies a dead African American baby. Seymour’s statement, “A mob can revolutionize as well as a government,” appears above his head, reinforcing Nast’s point. It was this kind of work that earned Nast so much attention. He used Seymour’s appearance, words, and past to suggest that not only was the Democrat no match for Grant, but he represented evil itself.
Fletcher Harper’s death in 1877 left Nast without his great protector. George Curtis, the Weekly’s editor, had long chaffed because Nast’s cartoons were allowed to contradict Curtis’s editorials. He believed that the paper should speak with one voice, and that voice should be Curtis’s.
Halloran argues that Nast’s cartoons had such power because they were the product of an individual vision. They grew out of Nast’s often visceral reaction to the news of the day, and they were informed by his humor, morals, and prejudices. His readers knew that when they saw a Nast cartoon, they were seeing a visualization of Nast’s conscience. Curtis wanted to be the mind behind the pictures.
Years of struggle over who was the boss led to frequent breaks between Nast and Harper’s Weekly in the following decades. Some years the artist did not work for the weekly at all. Nast began to lose his massive following as his work was less frequently published.
Nast’s lifestyle also harmed his work. His best political work had been done when he lived in the bustling world of New York City. He lived amidst politicians, hustlers, immigrants, and businessmen. His move to the wealthy environs of Morristown, New Jersey, isolated him from the life of the streets. His focus on family led to his great Santa Claus series, but blunted the edge of his artistic knife.
Nast’s last years saw a decline in the great man’s powers and an incessant need for money after his investments with Grant’s son were wiped out in the same scandal that impoverished the former president. His death in Guayaquil was the result of his quest for cash to keep his beautiful house in his family’s hands.
Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons provides a great deal of detail about the involvement of the artist in the politics of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Nast’s commitment to civil rights for blacks and opposition to the Chinese Exclusion Act show a man ahead of his time on issues of race. His love of Grant descended into a willingness to whitewash the abuses committed by the men around the general-president.
We all know the pictures of Thomas Nast, this book gives us a chance to seen the man who drew them.
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